


Sollux: Be the Queen Bee.

by Aryū Muin (Caeslin)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bees & Beekeeping, Bestiality, Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Graphic Birth Scene, Humiliation, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Caretaking, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Oviposition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:06:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caeslin/pseuds/Ary%C5%AB%20Muin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux's bees go into heat, and need somewhere to lay their eggs; Sollux is in the wrong place at the wrong time; Sollux involuntarily becomes an excellent host.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is kink fic! If the tags for this story don't sound sexy to you, then it might not be the most enjoyable thing in the world to read. (Or maybe it will be. Who knows!)
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/38559.html?thread=40941983#cmt40941983) at the Homesmut kink meme! It also inspired a BEAUTIFUL (and deeply nsfw) [piece of fanart](http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/36414642060/a-fanart-for-a-fic-on-the-kink-meme-sollux-be) by tumblr user syblatortue.
> 
>  **Story includes (and kinks on)** : non-consensual drugging, non-consensual sex, sex with insects (bees), xeno anatomy, mpreg (oviposition), mpreg as body horror, choking/gagging, nausea and discomfort, imprisonment, non-consensual caretaking, live birth (of insects), vomiting up (of insects), and humiliation. At no point does Sollux enjoy any of the above. Also, story does **not** contain aftercare or the "comfort" part of hurt/comfort (but it also doesn't contain any permanent mutilation or lasting physical aftereffects, so I guess there's that). 
> 
> **Story takes total liberty with** : the size of the bees in Sollux's hive; the size/structure of the bees' hive within Sollux's hive; how bee anatomy and bee reproduction works; human vs. troll words for body parts (because it's hard to make "protein chute" sound sexy); the idea that Sollux's friends wouldn't just come and check on him after a few weeks of radio silence.

On that fateful day, Sollux woke up fully intending to boot up his husktop and get to work on some code he was a hair's breadth away from finishing. He pulled himself out of his recuperacoon, his thoughts already buzzing with half-written operations, and was so preoccupied with keeping all the ideas in his head that it wasn't until he'd thrown a shirt on and walked out into the hallway that he noticed the cloying reek of mind honey in the air.

Sollux stopped walking; his train of thought jerked to a halt, as the implications of the scent sunk in. It was sweeter and stronger than normal, with an unmistakably ripe note. Yesterday, he'd barely even been able to smell the honey when he was sitting at his husktop. Now it reached as far as his bedroom, which was a sure sign that his code was going to have to wait for another few hours if not even longer. 

He sighed, and shuffled the rest of the way to his recreational chamber. 

The sight of the room confirmed all his worst fears. His bees were nowhere to be found; his husktop lay dead, its reserve power sapped dry overnight without any bodies to power it; and the narrow hole in the wall that led to the bees' vast hive exuded a scent so powerful it made Sollux dizzy even to breathe it. The bees must have evacuated nearly twelve hours ago. That meant Sollux had half a day left max to back up his data and check up on his hive to make sure that everything was in place for the laying.

The thing about apiculture networking, which Sollux had explained to Karkat every time he had expressed envy over Sollux's rad husktop setup, was that it required more than just technical skill to build a functional workstation. Sure, the husktop itself needed to be finagled out of grubplate and circuits and wires, and Sollux considered himself a frankly formidable computer engineer, but it wasn't the circuitry that gave Sollux's machine the power to compile obscene volumes of code while running games with ludicrously extravagant frame-rates at double the speed of Karkat's puny system. That power came from the bees alone, and they had a delicate neurosystem that required careful managing. You couldn't just run down bees like you could a cell battery; they needed breaks for feeding and foraging and other mundane bee things, and they couldn't be rushed. At no time was that clearer than the two weeks every quarter-sweep when they entered their mating season.

If the bees were already in their hive, and the mind honey smelled this strong, Sollux knew that they must have already gone into heat. They may have even started feeding the pheromone-laden honey to their queen, which would mean that she in turn was just about ready to receive their eggs. While Sollux found his reserve battery back and booted up his computer for just long enough to back up all his most recent files, he thought back to how long it had been since the last heat. That time, he remembered, a thermal leak in the hive had caused a temperature imbalance in the inner chambers that left nearly a quarter of the eggs stillborn; it had crippled Sollux's computing power all sweep. He couldn't afford another bad laying this time.

Sollux ignored a trollian alert from Karkat about some ancient game high score he had beaten, unplugged his portable hard drive from the husktop, and shut the whole system down. Then, before he could regret what he was about to do, he crawled over to the hive entrance and poked his head inside.

Far down the dark corridor, he could hear the sound of his bees. Sollux knew he would have to go further in to really test the conditions inside; he did not relish the prospect, especially because the entire tunnel was dripping with honey. He crawled inside, wincing at the cold, tacky feeling of the floor on his palms, and began to move down the corridor.

When he got into the first big cavern, Sollux pushed himself to his feet. Still there were no bees in sight; they must be clustered in the innermost rooms. The air was sweeter and more perfumed than ever, and it made him dizzy. The cavern felt warm. Could it be too warm? He shook his head to clear his senses, but it had almost no effect. The sound of distant buzzing echoed in his ears, so strong and omnipresent that it seemed to be making the floor vibrate beneath his feet.

It took Sollux longer than it should have to see the flash of movement at the far end of the chamber. He glanced up. In the distance was one of his bees. She must be a sentry, and he could see to his relief that she was heavy with eggs. Mission accomplished. He might as well turn back now.

Just as Sollux was about to turn away, the worker bee noticed him. He grumbled inwardly. He prepared to ready his psionics, to force the bee away if she got too close, but she was approaching slowly, clearly only interested in whether he was a threat to the hive. Her big, multifaceted black eyes squinted at him curiously. The haze of mating lust seemed to be clouding her normally keen senses; Sollux thought he might recognize this bee, but it was clear she couldn't say the same about him.

He took a slow step backwards. The bee stepped closer to him. He wondered if she would be able to sense his psychic signature, if he used his powers on her. That would have to be a last-chance scenario, since he didn't want to risk drawing the attention of the rest of the hive.

He stepped back again, and this time when he did so, a fat glop of honey dripped from the ceiling right onto his head.

Sollux cursed. Ducking his head, he swiped at the honey, which was caught in his hair and threatened to drip down onto his face. Doing so just got the wet, sticky stuff all over his hand. It tingled alarmingly against his skin, and unthinkingly, he brought his fingers to his mouth to lick the worst of it off.

As soon as his thumb was in his mouth and the heady sweetness of mind honey had flooded his taste buds, Sollux realized the hugeness of his mistake. Even as his brain assaulted him with a familiar barrage of colorful self-deprecating insults, the drug was shooting through his mind, drowning his senses, until there was nothing more to sense and everything fuzzed out.

-

Sollux's first thought, when he could string together any thoughts at all, was that there was something seriously wrong with this mind honey.

For one thing: from what he could see at this low, dizzy angle, the hive around him was still intact. 

For another: he seemed to be on the ground, with something wet and sticky at his back, his ears ringing and his head pulsing an alien rhythm. 

And another: He couldn't move. It was as though the fall had scrambled all connections between his limbs and his brain; no matter how much he thought about lifting his arms or bending his legs, nothing shifted. He tried to get up, but he might as well be trying to control the weather for how well that worked.

Lastly, and most alarming of all, the ever-present thrum of his psychic energy seemed to be gone from his mind altogether.

Sollux tried to will himself to sit up, and failed. His body felt disgusting. He must be drenched in honey. He could only imagine how laughable he must look, wet, sticky and dizzy, like a wiggler on its first day in the brooding caverns; the only possible upside to this situation was that no one else was here to see him.

Missing no opportunity to fuck with him, the universe decided that this was a perfect moment for something fuzzy and warm to brush against his leg.

Sollux stopped breathing. The worker bee -- _nice job, genius, how could you forget the fucking bee_ \-- nudged him again. It was the same sentry from before. He could see her blurrily out of the corner of his eye; then he could see a lot more of her, as she unceremoniously climbed up onto his body. 

He hissed in a breath as she rested her forelegs on his stomach; she was unexpectedly heavy. He tried with mind and body to lift her off, or at least roll himself over, but it was useless.

There must be some agent in the honey, he realized now. Some chemical compound that neutralized his powers. It had to be an extra defense of some kind for the eggs, to make sure that any intruders into the hive couldn't destroy the new brood. He didn't know when it would wear off, but it meant that he was utterly powerless to stop the bee from crawling up his torso, for what purpose he couldn't begin to guess.

Sollux could feel the weight of her distended abdomen pressing on his own stomach, and he shivered.

"That's for the queen," he finally managed to say, with a mouth that felt full of cotton, his lisp even worse than usual. ". . . Go back to her."

The bee had crawled up far enough now that he could see the top of her downy black head, and he wished harder than ever that he could at least lift his neck to get a better look at her. She had to be at his chest level; what was she planning to do? Surely not just sit on him.

He felt her legs begin to move, and then the weight of her shift; she seemed to be turning around. In a few efficient moments, she'd made a half-circle on his stomach, so that now it was her rear that was before his face. In bleary close-up, he could see her swollen ovipositor, the sting itself retracted for now, dangling inches above him and pulsing with the worker bee's vibrations.

If he wasn't already paralyzed, Sollux would have gone dead still. In all his confusion about the bee's intentions, he had forgotten that he was an intruder in her hive, and she was completely capable of stinging him right in the goddamn mouth.

Don't, he thought, desperation blooming in his brain. I'm not here to hurt you, I'm your owner, you _know_ me, holy fuck please don't sting me. 

Just one sting and he knew the pheromones would call the whole rest of the hive, and he'd be powerless, they could seriously kill him -- The bee was shifting, settling on his body so close now that all her weight was on his chest and her fuzz was tickling her face. Her tube was right above his lips.

Just then she drove all her weight sharply against Sollux's chest cavity, driving all the breath out of him, and making him gasp. And before Sollux could shut his mouth again she had rocked back again, driving her ovipositor swiftly in between his lips.

"Mmph--!"

She forced the protuberance past his lips and onto his tongue with a single powerful thrust. When he weakly tried to bite down on it, the stiff, rubbery substance of the tube did not yield against his teeth; he could do nothing to prevent it wedging itself deep inside his mouth, thick and blunt, the girth of it stretching his lips and tickling the walls of his throat. The taste ( _you nubsuckling idiot, why do you even care about the taste_ ) was sweet and dizzying, like the honey he had ingested but moreso. Sollux could only breathe shallowly around it, and tried through the nauseous haze that consumed his whole body not to panic.

The bee wriggled some more, evidently getting comfortable. Each shift of the ovipositor inside his mouth made Sollux want to gag. When it brushed the back of his throat he _did_ gag, his body using the only means it had left to try to repel the intruder, but the worker bee stayed firmly in place.

The one part of his mind that still worked took bitter pleasure in taunting him. _Great job, Captor. You're on the ground inside one of your own hives, soaked in honey, and you can't even stop one of your own bees from . . . deep-throating you, I guess?_

The worker began to thrust her abdomen inside his mouth, forcing a muffled shout from him. He tried to draw breath around her. She was jerking fast, sudden, erratic, as though propelled by a mechanical force; she was . . .

Sollux only realized the worker bee's true intentions when the first egg shot down his throat.

He choked around it in alarm. The egg -- wet, slimy, disgustingly warm, and as big as a walnut -- forced itself down his throat and into his chest, despite every muscle inside of him convulsing in violent opposition. It landed somewhere in his stomach. He could feel it there acutely, adhering treacherously to his inner walls, and he felt sick.

The honey bee paid no attention to his distress. With simple animal instinct, she was busy pushing a second egg out into his mouth, an this too Sollux had no choice but to gag down and let join the first egg in his belly. He let out a weak groan as it entered his chest. No sooner had it settled there than a third one was being worked into his mouth; and the third, in turn, was followed by a fourth.

By the time the fifth came, he could feel himself beginning to panic. It was only the shrinking size of the bee's abdomen that comforted him, as he swallowed the invading objects into his resistant throat and tried to keep breathing; it reminded him that if he just kept his head, he could endure even this.

Egg number six, making his throat swell. Sollux forced it down. And thankfully, miraculously, it seemed to be the last one: when she had laid it, the honeybee ceased her vibrations, her ovipositor shrinking to a demure size inside his mouth. Sollux gasped for air when she finally extracted it, and tried not to think too hard about the slippery strands of mucous that dripped from the end, that he could still feel gumming up the inside of his mouth.

The honeybee shook herself off. Then, she crawled off him. His muscles were still too weak for him to be able to lift his head, but Sollux could clearly hear the buzz of her wings as she flew away, and felt a dull sense of relief.

His brain was still gummed and sticky, and he still couldn't sense his psionics at all, but in the newly silent air Sollux could at least try to think. He knew that the mind honey would wear off in another hour, at most. When it did, when he had all his faculties about him and could escape, all he needed to do was return to his own hivestem; once he did, a simple internet search with the last of his backup power should be able to tell him what substance he needed to ingest to sterilize and remove the eggs. Even if escape took longer than expected, apis eggs took several days to mature before they hatched. If he just kept his cool he would be fine.

It was hard to stay calm when he couldn't move a muscle. Worse, if Sollux focused hard, he was convinced he could feel the warm weight of the newly-deposited eggs inside him. He closed his eyes, tried not to feel ill, and focused all his energy on the simple, repetitive task of breathing.

He opened them again when he heard the sound of buzzing echoing down the corridor.

His heart started pumping. The sound grew louder, unmistakable in its trajectory. The same bee, back for more? Or another, following her lead?

Sollux got his answer when the bee landed on him with a solid thump, and he felt the heft of her egg-laden belly. 

Fuck. He closed his eyes, full of self-loathing. Fuck his life. _Captor, you idiot._

He waited with bated breath for the bee to make the same crude invasion as her sister, and plunge her own ovipositor into his mouth. He clenched his teeth together resolutely. It was a nasty shock when he he heard a sharp ripping noise far lower, and felt a warm, sharp pressure dangerously close to his nook.

Somehow Sollux found the strength to raise his neck just slightly. It gave him a view he instantly regretted: the giant bee was perched on his middle, her furred head inches from his own face, and her abdomen positioned over his crotch. Beneath it, he could see she'd torn a hole right through his jeans to expose his shivering nook to the open air.

There was no way this bee could know that much about the finer bits of troll anatomy. Or maybe it was an instinctive sense. Whatever the reason, this worker seemed to understand enough to be able to slide her ovipositor under the ridge of Sollux's still-sheathed bone bulge, up into his nook.

His head slammed back to the ground as that first sensation hit. It was like the mind honey, but ten times more intense, and sustained, with no promise of blackout or relief. She was _inside him_ , where nothing but his own delicately cushioned fingers had ever been before.

"Holy shit," Sollux breathed, as the bee hunkered down. His entire nook contracted with every shift she made inside him. She wiggled, like she was trying to get comfortable; the ovipositor itself throbbed against his skin; and the joint pressure from them both seared him, made his every inch of skin a live wire, so that he couldn't keep from making these awful, desperate noises as she moved. "Oh . . . Uh . . . D--don't -- wait -- ngh . . ."

Once she'd settled deep within him, the bee began to thrust. The sensation magnified a hundredfold, electricity thrumming along every nerve Sollux possessed, making his hips jerk of their own volition; his words turned into gasps, his gasps into desperate panting, as the vibrations lit up his skin and overloaded his nerves and didn't show any signs of stopping. 

He clung to the ground desperately with his nails. When the first of the bee's eggs entered him, he let out a hoarse shoat, shuddering as it pushed inside to the small hollow that was meant to hold pailing fluid. It felt solid and unnatural wedged inside of him. But the ovipositor thrummed in a way that drove his nook crazy, and the way it pulsed and shuddered around the second egg as it prepared to deposit it, too, filled him with breathless sensation. He quivered as this egg was laid right beside the first. The pleasure overrode his nausea, driving all thought out of his head and all control from his body.

One egg after another fed into him, driving him higher and higher. Sollux could have cried when the bee finally withdrew, leaving his nook strained and tense and just this side of release. He lay there gasping, exhausted, so aroused it was nearly painful.

He moaned in relief when a second bee landed on him to finish the job begun by the first. With his slowly returning strength, he canted his hips into her thrusts, tangling his newly unsheathed bulges around her body, and bucked mindlessly around the eggs she laid inside him until the pressure spilled over and he came, explosively, all over them both.

The bee, unruffled, deposited the last of her brood inside him. She extracted herself from his nook and the tangle of his bulges, and flew away. Sollux lay thoroughly drained on the ground. Now that the pleasure had ebbed away, he could feel the weight of his nook, stuffed double-full of eggs, unpleasantly heavy inside of him. 

Before he could even think of what to do next, another bee was upon him. Sollux hissed as she probed the messy, exhausted muscles of his entrance; with one hand, he feebly attempted to push himself up and shake her off.

He was foiled by a second bee, this one landing her full heavy weight on his chest and neck. He fell back to the ground with a thump, and she mercilessly wedged her ovipositor in between his lips; then she and the bee below began to fuck him in tandem. Sollux gagged and grunted as they abused his body; then he closed his eyes in discomfort as the eggs began to come. They pumped him full until their bellies were empty. No sooner had the one below finished, than another one flew in to take its place; and when the one above had deposited all its load, Sollux felt something sweet and thick on his tongue. Honey, he realized, with sinking despair. The liquid melted in his mouth, and the slowly growing awareness in his limbs deserted him.

He could distantly hear the buzz and thrum of the room; in the short time since these new bees had come, they'd evidently been joined by company. From the sound of it, there must be dozens of bees in here. Prone, powerless, his mind fogging up with heady confusion, Sollux could do nothing to stop them as one after another, they lined up and waited to use him. 

He had no idea how long the laying lasted. It felt agonizing and endless: while he lay in fever, worker after worker came to fill him with her eggs. He swallowed them down his throat and up his nook, filling up little by little; with increasingly feeble resistance, he fought to endure the squeeze in his throat, the stretch of his jaw, the agonizing sensitivity and ecstatic pleasure that filled his loins as the worker bees used him. His own bulges twined around the bees' bodies, pulling their ovipositors deeper inside him, making him swear and groan and gasp. He came, several times, but the bees did not stop.

They kept feeding him mind honey, and gradually it numbed him. What had at first been pleasure turned into a dull, throbbing pain; what had once been burning humiliation became a flat, bloated sense of resignation. Soon enough, Sollux began to open his mouth willingly for the ovipositors, and pliantly sucked the eggs down his raw, abused throat. His nook, filled to what felt like bursting, had no choice but to accept more and more eggs as the bees inserted them. He was nauseous and queasy; talking hurt. Breathing hurt. All Sollux could manage was a sustained, ragged, faint moan as the workers continued steadily to impregnate him.

With every new clutch he dared to hope that it might be the last, that his body was filled up as full as it could possibly be. But it turned out that his two ends could hold an obscene amount of eggs. Eventually his belly was distended and heaving; it weighed down heavily on him, making breathing difficult, and movement impossible. Still it swelled fatter with each new brood, as though insatiable for more. 

Even if he could somehow escape, Sollux was uncertain whether he could even get all the eggs out on his own, now. There had to be hundreds of them inside him. 

He looked up at his own girth numbly, and made one last vow to himself: he would stay conscious until this torture stopped.

Another bee plugged up his mouth, then, and he was forced to swallow her eggs like all the rest. A second worker began her work down below. As their slimy eggs stuffed him tight and full, crowding all the rest, his body spasmed agonizingly around them. A muffled cloud of static bloomed in his head, and he felt the eggs anchor inside his body as though from fathoms away. In the underwater silence if his brain, his determination began to waver.

He wouldn't be able to recall the precise moment when he blacked out, but when he finally did, his traitorous mind welcomed the relief.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEADS UP: This is the part that has the birthing and sort-of vomiting! Take caution, if that's not your thing.

When Sollux next woke, he had a killer headache, and no idea of how much time he had spent asleep. He felt so bleary and disoriented that for several long seconds he couldn't even manage to make himself open his eyes. It felt like his body was made of cement.

When he did open his eyes, he discovered that he was sitting upright. His arms and legs were stuck to the walls of the same chamber he had collapsed in, gummed tight with some sort of rigid honey-enzyme glue; when he tried to move them, he could only barely wiggle his hands and feet. 

He had been stripped completely naked, he saw; his bare stomach was full and pregnant. No wonder he felt so sore, he thought with a dull horror.

A few feet away, Sollux could see a worker bee. When she noticed that he was awake, she came forward, resting her forelegs gently on his bloated chest, and curled her long spiral tongue toward him in invitation. He shied away at first, but when she waited unmoving on his chest, neither pursuing him nor relenting, he realized that her intentions were benign.

Chagrinned, he leaned forward, and opened his mouth to shakily accept the mind honey she was offering onto his own tongue. His muscles were still so weak that he could barely swallow the mouthful she gave him; bu the bee helped lick it down his throat, and soon he felt the world slipping away from him again.

-

The next time he woke, he was still naked and heavy and glued to the wall, but this time he was completely alone.

Sollux looked around, hardly daring to believe his luck. The chamber appeared to be empty. Even better, he couldn't hear any bees in the distance. He tried not to get too excited, but silently flexed his fingers and toes again; and then, daringly, began to try to shake his arms and legs from their honey casings.

Predictably, he couldn't move them at all, but this didn't deter his hope. He tried pulling at his limbs more forcefully, twisting them, sliding them, anything that might even slightly weaken his bonds. It became painfully evident as he did so that he wasn't anywhere near his full strength; even a little bit of struggling got him breathless and covered in sweat. And nothing he tried did anything to loosen his restraints. 

He slumped against the wall, panting, and cursing the mind honey he'd been made to eat for weakening him and stripping away his psychic powers. A cynical part of his mind began to wonder: had the bees left him alone because they knew he couldn't escape?

The thought of giving up now was repugnant, and Sollux tried to escape with renewed strength. He tried, and he tried, and he tried, for over an hour at least, until he was dizzy and breathless. All he could manage after all that time was a pathetic cant of his hips and futile clenched fists. His belly hurt worse than ever, and weighed on him with seemingly twice as much weight as before.

Eventually the bees came back. This time, he drank down their mind honey gladly. The darkness welcomed him, sweet and forgiving.

-

Over the next few days, this routine repeated itself. After ingesting the honey, Sollux would sleep a deep, black, dreamless sleep like none he had ever known; and then after some point he would wake up, and find himself still glued to the wall. More often than not there was a bee there to attend to him. Sometimes he was alone, and he would try and fail to escape for as long as it took for the bees to return. Sometimes he would try for hours. He slowly grew to dread these stretches of time, and began perversely to find comfort in the bees' return, inasmuch as they saved him from himself.

Now that all their eggs were laid, the workers who came to visit Sollux were far less aggressive than they had been while mating. Weak and boneless, he was limp under their ministrations, and they sweetly nurtured him in his helplessness. The bees gently fed him honey, and licked the residue that dripped from his slack mouth. They groomed him with their forelegs and feelers and tongues, cleaning the sticky sweetness from every crevice of his body. Every so often they even coaxed his bulges out of their sheath, and milked them with their feathery curling tongues until Sollux shuddered limply to completion in their embrace. Some part of him registered that this was the treatment typically given to a queen of the hive. He looked down at his vast belly, and all the hundreds of creatures that must be living inside, and guessed it must be an easy mistake to make.

Even more days went by, and the life in Sollux's belly began to grow restless. It felt like the eggs were roiling inside him, the ever-present nausea and discomfort growing even more unbearable, and now whenever he was awake he couldn't help but let out these weak, wobbly groans. The bees gave him more honey to ease the pain, and massaged his pregnant stomach. They laved his bulges and even the swollen lips of his overfull nook, and ushered out one weak, watery orgasm after another. It helped a little. Sollux pressed feebly against their alien mouths, dragging his bulges against their soft down, and tried to feel the pleasure through the pain.

-

And then, after who knows how long, there came one day when Sollux opened his eyes and found that his bonds were gone.

Astonished, he took in the scene. He was still deep within the hive, propped up against the same wall he'd been adhered to for the past several days. His arms and legs, however, were no longer encased in their sticky amber traps; and what's more, Sollux found to his amazement that he could even move them, albeit weakly. He wiggled his fingers in disbelief. They were sore, and swollen, but responsive. This was his chance.

The cavern was currently empty. Sollux didn't know if it was by accident or design, but he wasn't about to hang around and find out. With urgent concentration, he fought the nausea inside him and tried to remember how the joints in his body worked. He planted both palms unsteadily on the ground.

When Sollux tried to push himself up, though, his muscles buckled under him. They must have grown weak from disuse, not to mention the strain of supporting his new, heavier body. He gritted his teeth, and tried again. He couldn't even lift himself an inch off the ground. Grunting and straining, his palms growing sweaty, he cursed himself under his breath.

After he had succeeded in doing nothing more than making his arms feel weak and shaky and his heartbeat thump wildly in his chest, Sollux had to stop and reconsider. Slumped back on the wall, he tried to get his breath back. Finally, burning with humiliation, he revised his approach. With what little strength he had, he was able to push himself over, onto his side; and then, from there, onto quivering hands and knees. The floor was sticky and damp, and only with the utmost effort and the greatest care was Sollux able to put one shaky palm in front of the other and slowly, laboriously begun to crawl away from the wall. His belly dragged along the ground as he moved. Each jolt of the eggs inside him made him want to throw up.

He had no idea where in the hive he even was, but he could only pick a direction and hope that it was the right one. Inch by inch, he dragged himself across the floor. It was a miracle the bees hadn't returned already.

After a full minute of struggle and only a few feet traversed, his whole body was dripping with sweat. When Sollux put his damp palm forward, it slipped against the ground, and he collapsed onto his full belly. He swore, and lay there helplessly, unable to move. Frustrated tears beaded in the corners of his eyes. It took everything in him to force the strength back into his limbs, and push himself up to kneeling again. He resumed his glacial journey.

When he was nearly halfway across the room, a muscle spasm wracked his whole body, nearly making him fall again. Sollux trembled, not even daring at first to try moving again. His heart beat wildly. Something felt horribly wrong. 

He was finally about to start crawling again when another spasm shook his body; and this one made him cough, as something caught sharp and painful in his chest.

Sollux bent over. Suddenly a wave of nausea hit him, stronger than he'd ever felt before, and he was certain he was going to throw up after all. But instead, his throat buckled and he hacked a final, explosive cough; and with it, something wet and slimy shot out of his mouth.

Sollux looked down blearily. There was a small, glistening white worm on the ground. It had, he realized with some horror, come from inside of him. It was moving; it was alive.

No, he thought distantly. This couldn't be happening. That couldn't have just . . .

But before he could even finish the thought, another wave of violent coughs overcame him. There was a building tightness in his throat. It was choking him; he couldn't breathe. Sollux hacked, and gasped; then finally he moaned, in agony and relief, as the larvae crawled up into his mouth. He spit them out weakly, three this time, each the size of his thumb, and all alive and well. He stared at them with dismay. He could feel more crawling up his throat.

Fuck. Oh, fuck. He was going to be sick.

Just then, another tremor shot through him, jellying his arms and legs, and he collapsed heavily back onto his stomach. He grunted. Then his nook throbbed alarmingly; he realized that it too felt alive, and was starting to wriggle from the inside, all the nerves coming to life.

This time, when the next few larvae crawled out of his mouth, they were joined by another one squirming out of his nook. Sollux gasped as it wriggled out and his nook contracted frantically around it. When it pushed free, the contractions didn't stop, but intensified, making him keen -- a keen which turned into another spluttering cough as a new batch of worms crawled up onto his tongue. His hips bucked of his own accord. One by one, more creatures forced themselves out of him from both ends, smooth and slimy and cool.

Sollux tried desperately to clench his muscles, to keep the invasion from spilling out. But the larvae inside him, newly hatched, had a mind of their own. He gagged as another batch began to crawl up his throat; and when he was distracted with them, more squirmed out of him below, setting off another round of spasms that made him powerless to stop even more insects from crowding his digestive chute. Every time he coughed them out, he could feel more just behind them. They wormed their way out of him in twos and threes with perverse strength. They made his body writhe and buckle. 

At first they came slow, with pauses in between each batch that allowed him to catch his breath and fill again with dread; but as more and more hatched inside him, they began to crowd his insides, fighting to escape. They jammed his nook, so that he had to work furiously to push them out fast enough to keep up with the new ones; they crammed his throat full and spilled out onto his tongue in a constant deluge, so that he couldn't even close his mouth around all the insects trying to crawl free. He gurgled in panic around them.

When the honey bees finally came back, it was almost a relief. They crowded around Sollux with swift efficiency, and cradled his shuddering body with their wings so that he didn't have to hold himself up. A few of them helped hold his mouth open, so that the larvae could leave unobstructed, while others helped massage the ones below out of his nook. They gently licked up his tears and picked off the handful of larvae that had begun to crawl all over his body, depositing them in the honeycomb cells that lined the room. And the applied a soft pressure to the clusters of eggs still embedded deep within his body, so that they would flow out smoothly when they hatched. 

Sollux moaned in their embrace. He had no dignity now, leaking from both ends, twitching and shudering and twisting in their grip; he was acting like an animal, and didn't even care. All he prayed for was relief.

Gradually his belly emptied, until at long last he was almost back to a normal shape, and there were only a few insects left wriggling isnide him. These the honeybees deftly picked out of him with their own mouths, and he submitted to their treatment as meekly and bonelessly as a baby bird. When the last of the grubs had been plucked from his worn-out holes, Sollux slumped limply onto the floor. He was too exhausted to even begin to contemplate doing anything else.

The urge to just pass out there on the ground was overwhelming. He likely would have, common sense be damned, if it wasn't for the weight that landed abruptly on his back. Sollux grunted, annoyed.

He felt a cold, familiar pressure curling around his rear and positioning itself heavy and full at his entrance. His blood went cold. He realized that he'd gotten ahead of himself.

_Genus, apis, species, trollus mellifera: the common troll honeybee. Breeds once every quarter-sweep, its cycle synchronized with all its hive, for a mating period of approximately two weeks duration. The extraordinary resillience of the queen allows for three or four successive impregnations during this period, which are necessary to accommodate the vast number of workers and ensure a healthy crop of new bees the following sweep. Reimpregnation typically occurs immediately after birth, to allow for the maximum number of pregnancies during this brief window of time. The increased elasticity of the queen's body following her first pregnancy furthermore allows increasingly large numbers of eggs to be laid with each successive pregnancy, incentivizing the workers to impregnate her as many times as possible._

The first egg shot into his engrance with barely any sensation at all, but he could feel the others ready and waiting in the worker bee's abdomen. Around him, the many other bees in the room had begun to form an interested circle.

It was the final tipping point. With a wheezy, breathless voice he could barely recognize as his own, Sollux began to laugh. He laughed as the worker bee drove at his raw, sore, baggy passage; kept laughing, as she laid the rest of her eggs in him; and then another bee had landed on her shoulders, and was stuffing her ovipositor in his mouth, and he couldn't laugh anymore. Even then, his body shook with silent, hysterical tremors. The bees took no notice.

-

Over the next few weeks, in his increasingly unbearable downtime, Sollux found himself thinking of things he normally wouldn't have given a second thought to, just to distract himself. Stuff like how often the sopor in his recuperacoon needed changing versus how often he actually changed it; or all the food in his hive that was probably going bad right now; or even those books and movies Karkat tried to force on him that he still hadn't watched. Sollux had never been much of a fiction person because of how most books seemed to be full of hoofbeastshit; as far as he could tell, if something happened in a fictional story the odds were high that the author was pulling every detail they knew about it out of their ass.

For instance, he was pretty sure that when characters in novels went through some shitty experience, at some point time lost all meaning and before they knew it they'd come out on the other side. Turned out that wasn't actually a thing that happened in real life. Turned out that no matter how long a shitty experience went on, it didn't ever stop feeling shitty, and slow, and endless.

In true fact, here's how things would actually turn out to happen.

When what ended up being his final clutch of eggs was laid, Sollux mostly felt confused and bone-tired. There was no epiphany about his new freedom when he was lying there on the stale, sticky ground; in fact, he didn't even realize that he was being freed until the bees had finished cleaning his body with an efficiency that was wholly familiar to him now and had half-flown, half-dragged his bedraggled corpse all the way to the entrance of the hive.

When they set him on the ground, he just lay there at first, waiting for them to pick him back up and do what they normally did. But the bees didn't do anything.

He kept lying there. He could hear some of the bees retreat back into the hive. He closed his eyes, anticipating the sound of their return; anticipating, even when the noise of their buzzing got quieter, not louder. It turned out that waiting was pretty exhausting. He dozed off.

When Sollux awoke next, he felt cold and more truly alert than he had for weeks, and for the first time he could feel the faint echo of his psychic signature again.

He inched out of the hive in a daze. It took a while, because his limbs felt like watery noodles, but he didn't see a bee the whole time. When he finally pulled himself out onto the familiar grody floor of his recreational chamber, it must have taken everything he had left in him because almost immediately he fell asleep again.

If this were a novel, he would no doubt have woken up and felt like he'd been given a new lease on life or something like that. As it was, Sollux mostly felt really dirty, so the first thing he did after getting to his feet for the first time in days was to go the ablution chamber and take a scalding hot shower and use up a good half bar of soap, scrubbing and scrubbing until the water ran cold. 

Then he realized he was starving, so he stumbled into his kitchen and made a not-particularly-great-tasting sandwich. He scarfed it down nonetheless, then promptly made another one, which he ate just as quickly. Then his stomach seemed to realize it hadn't digested solid food in a perigree and wasn't especially keen to start right now, and he went back to the ablution chamber to throw both the sandwiches back up.

After that, because it wasn't like he had anything better to do, Sollux decided to boot up his husktop.

The performance upgrade was noticeable already. The OS blinked to life in a matter of seconds, the display crisper and more responsive than it had been all sweep. Even trollian was quick to start up, auto-signing Sollux in before he'd even gotten the chance to properly settle in his chair.

He blinked as he was assaulted nigh-instantaneously by a message from Karkat. _(Looks like some loser has an alert set up._ Sollux would tease him about that but for some reason he wasn't really feeling up to it right now.)

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]

CG: WELL WELL WELL.  
CG: IF IT ISN'T THE KING OF SULKY TEMPER TANTRUMS.  
TA: excu2e me?  
CG: DON'T DENY THAT YOU'VE SPENT THE PAST THREE WEEKS MOPING AROUND IN YOUR HIVE, SHEDDING DAINTY GIRL TEARS AS YOU REASSEMBLE THE FRAGMENTS OF YOUR BRUTALLY SHATTERED PRIDE.  
CG: I HAVE TO ADMIT, I EXPECTED BETTER FROM YOU.  
CG: I THOUGHT YOU WOULD TAKE YOUR INEVITABLE GAMING DEFEAT AT MY HANDS A LITTLE MORE GRACEFULLY.  
CG: IN FACT, I SHOULD PROBABLY BE FEELING A LITTLE BAD ABOUT HOW MUCH OF AN UTTER WIGGLER YOU'RE BEING ABOUT THE SITUATION.  
CG: BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT VICTORY IS DELICIOUS.  
CG: ALSO, I HOPE YOU KNOW, I TOLD ALL OUR FRIENDS ABOUT HOW I FINALLY BEAT YOUR HIGH SCORE IN COLORFUL INTERLOCKING BLOCK PUZZLE WARS.  
CG: THEY ALL THINK YOU'RE A LOSER NOW.  
CG: IT'S PRETTY AWESOME.  
CG: I'M JOKING, BY THE WAY. I DON'T ACTUALLY THINK ANYONE CARES ABOUT COLORFUL INTERLOCKING BLUCK PUZZLE WARS, INCLUDING ME, DESPITE THE FACT THAT I HAVE BEEN TRYING FOR MONTHS TO BEAT A RECORD YOU SET SWEEPS AGO, WHICH NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT IS KIND OF PATHETIC?  
CG: I DIDN'T EVEN THINK YOU CARED, HONESTLY.  
CG: AND YET THAT THAT'S THE ONLY RECENT EVENT I CAN THINK OF THAT WOULD EXPLAIN YOUR TOTAL RADIO SILENCE FOR THE PAST TWENTY-FIVE DAYS, OUTSIDE OF YOU DECIDING TO BLOCK ME OR YOU SUFFERING SOME CATASTROPHE SO SHITTASTIC THAT YOU COULDN'T EVEN FIND TIME TO LOG ONLINE AND GIVE YOUR BEST FRIENDS A STATUS UPDATE.  
CG: I WOULD SAY I HADN'T ENTERTAINED THE LATTER TWO POSSIBILITIES AT ALL, BUT I WOULD BE LYING.  
CG: SERIOUSLY.  
CG: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?  
CG: . . . SOLLUX?  
TA: wow.  
CG: WOW WHAT?  
TA: ii forgot ju2t how headache-iinducing your 2houty text ii2.  
TA: thank2 for the miigraiine.  
CG: AND I IN TURN FORGOT WHAT AN ASSHOLE YOU ARE.  
CG: ALSO, THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER.  
CG: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY OKAY?  
TA: iim fiine, KK.  
TA: 2ome of u2 can take a break from the iinternet wiithout iit beiing a huge pa22iive-aggre22iive dramatiic ge2ture.  
TA: ii ju2t had a power outage.  
CG: THAT'S THE LEAST CONVINCING EXPLANATION FOR A THREE-WEEK ABSENCE I HAVE EVER HEARD.  
CG: I CAN'T ACTUALLY THINK OF WHERE ON THIS PLANET YOU COULD POSSIBLY LIVE FOR THAT TO BE TRUE.  
CG: OR AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE YOU'VE JOINED HER IMPERIAL CONDESCE'S FLEET AND WERE JUST DICKING AROUND ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE LITTLE PINK MOON FOR THE PAST PERIGREE?  
TA: no, but my computer ii2 powered by bee2.  
TA: ii am pretty 2ure ii have giiven you thi2 exact explanatiion 2everal tiime2 before, but they periiodiically need 2 go offliine to replentii2h theiir number2.  
CG: HOW IS THAT AN EXPLANATION?  
CG: AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK THAT. . .  
CG: OH.  
TA: yeah.  
CG: GROSS.  
TA: yeah.  
CG: SO TO BE TOTALLY CLEAR, WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT WHILE I'VE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU, YOU'VE JUST BEEN SITTING AROUND YOUR HIVESTEM WITH NO POWER WHILE YOUR BEES HAVE SEX?  
TA: pretty much.  
CG: I CAN'T DECIDE IF THAT SOUNDS MORE MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING, OR EXCRUCIATINGLY AWKWARD.  
CG: THOUGH POSSIBLY ALSO RELAXING?  
CG: WHO AM I KIDDING, YOU'RE WORSE AT RELAXING THAN I AM.  
TA: yeah, no, iit wa2 pretty much ju2t boriing.  
TA: kiind of glad 2 be done wiith iit 2 be hone2t.  
CG: IF IT'S ANY CONSOLATION, IT'S NOT LIKE YOU MISSED MUCH HERE.  
CG: ASIDE FROM A CERTAIN ASININE STUNT ERIDAN PULLED THAT WE ARE ALL TRYING TO PUT OUT OF OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORIES FOR BOTH HIS SAKE AND OURS, THINGS ARE AS DULL AS EVER.  
TA: oh yeah?  
CG: YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT, BELIEVE ME.  
CG: YOUR BEE SEX ESCAPADES ARE PROBABLY MORE PALATABLE.  
TA: 2 tell the truth iim 2ort of 2iick of thiinking about tho2e at thii2 poiint.  
CG: OH RIGHT, I GUESS YOU WOULD BE.  
CG: LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.  
TA: actually  
TA: can iit waiit?  
TA: iim realiizing iim more tiired than ii thought here.  
TA: ii miight need to take a nap.  
CG: HA HA HA HA.  
CG: A NAP? SERIOUSLY?  
TA: yeah, haviing no hu2ktop for 2 week2 ii2 hard work.  
CG: NAPS ARE FOR WIGGLERS.  
CG: BUT I GUESS IF I SAY NO I'LL LOOK EVEN MORE LIKE AN ASS THAN I PROBABLY DO ALREADY.  
TA: you beiing an a22 ii2 one of the con2tant2 of the uniiver2e, KK.  
TA: iit2 2iimultaneou2ly your mo2t and lea2t endeariing quality.  
CG: GO TO BED, WIGGLER.  
CG: DON'T DISAPPEAR FOR THREE WEEKS THIS TIME.  
CG: ALSO, WHEN YOU COME BACK, I WANT TO ASK YOU A FEW THINGS ABOUT APICULTURE NETWORKING.  
CG: DESPITE ITS NOW GLARINGLY OBVIOUS DOWNSIDES I HAVE TO ADMIT I'M STILL KIND OF FASCINATED BY IT.  
CG: I SOMETIMES THINK I MIGHT EVEN LIKE TO GET A BEEHOUSE MAINFRAME OF MY OWN SOMEDAY.  
TA: . . .  
CG: DON'T YOU SKEPTICALLY DOT-DOT-DOT AT ME.  
CG: I'M TELLING YOU, I CAN HANDLE IT.  
CG: OR IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE A CUTE WAY OF MIMING THAT YOU'RE FALLING ASLEEP AT THE COMPUTER?  
CG: HELLO?

twinArmageddons [TA] is now an idle troll!

CG: I GUESS THE LATTER.  
CG: TALK TO YOU LATER, LOSER.  
CG: (AND BY LATER I MEAN AS SOON AS YOU WAKE UP FROM YOUR WIGGLER NAP.)  
CG: DORK.


End file.
